Traditional sailboats and monohull vessels have been used for centuries to support personnel transportation, fishing, and military operations. These basic designs included large sails attached to a mast which propelled the vessel through the water. Stability was often enhanced by re-positioning goods and people along the main deck, or adding water and artificial weights to the hull to create a keel. As these displacement hull designs evolved, their stability was often improved by sacrificing speed and maneuverability through the waves.
These first rudimentary designs gave way to vessels with multiple hulls that are able to plane over the water with less draft and at faster speeds. As racing and yachting increased the innovation in naval architecture, watercraft became fitted with planar hulls which allowed for even greater speed and maneuverability.
Today these multi-hulled catamaran designs are able to reach incredible speeds and outperform the monohull vessels with the same dimensions but provide increased danger in high-speed turns due to the lower center of gravity and shallower drafts. Hull technology now provides for symmetrically and non-symmetrically shaped hulls which may be oriented in a variety of configurations to help counter these stability challenges, but often lead to reduced speed and maneuverability.
Often these watercraft may be seen leaning outwardly during a high sped turn and if not controlled, may lead to capsizing. This “heeling phenomenon” is created by both a hulls design and the centrifugal forces against it during a turn. During Regatta's these high speed sailboats often heel to a point where at least one hull is out of the water requiring the crew to quickly position along the main deck until the vessel has righted. Though technology has created faster and more maneuverable vessels, the physics and hydrodynamics of turns continue to lead to heeling and capsizing with these high-speed watercraft.
Though there are several portable, high-performance catamaran watercrafts which provide for enhanced stability and turning performance using planar hull technology such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,090,648 to Wood; U.S. Pat. No. 4,877,045 to Lin; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,777,642 to Cruz; there is not single reference which enables high-speed turns while prevent any “heeling effects” and provide for immediate planing along the surface of the water when propulsion is provided.